The journey of overcoming difficulties of 'triplets who all passed the military school entrance exam'

(Baonghean.vn)- To achieve the miracle of having triplets all pass the entrance exam to the Military University, Mr. Nguyen Doan Dung's family in Thanh Chuong, Nghe An had to go through difficult days.

» Nghe An: The miracle of triplets being admitted to the same military university

Mrs. Tan and her triplets, born before they were 1 year old. Photo courtesy of NVCC.

Mr. Dung and Mrs. Tan got married in 1994 and had their first child the following year. The husband's family had many children and was poor. His father was seriously ill, so when the couple moved out, they had nothing but a one-room thatched house "with the kitchen removed to make a home".

Sympathizing with the young couple in poverty in the situation of “a thatched roof, two golden hearts”, in 1998, Nguyen Doan’s relatives “contributed a lot” to help the couple build a new house. While Mrs. Tan was pregnant for the second time, the couple still made bricks and dug the foundation to build the house themselves. After several months, working as a motorbike taxi driver during the day and a construction worker at night, the wife as a bricklayer, carrying bricks, the husband building, the two-room house was completed.

Three brothers Manh, Trong, Vinh were born at the age of 11. Photo: NVCC.

After finishing the house, Mrs. Tan prepared to give birth. When she went to the doctor, she found out she was pregnant with triplets. She gave birth to three boys at once, weighing a total of 7.1 kg. In the first days after giving birth, many people who heard the news came to "ask for the child", but the couple refused, "no matter how difficult it is, we can still raise our own children."

Recalling the process of taking care of triplets (Manh, Trong, Vinh), Mrs. Tan said: “When they were born, everyone from both the paternal and maternal sides came to help take care of them, but after that, I had to take care of them myself. Just breastfeeding and feeding them was complicated, sometimes there was a lack of milk, sometimes there was a lack of powder, I couldn’t handle it alone, many times I had to cry with my children.”

Mr. Dung said: once, the couple went to work, but did not have time to ask anyone to look after the children, so they had to risk it and still closed the door. When they came home, they saw the brothers squatting in the middle of the house eating MSG, one of the three children was "drunk" and had to be taken to the emergency room. After that time, to make the children safer, the grandfather built a bamboo crib, and when needed, he put the three brothers Manh, Trong, and Vinh in the crib.

Mr. Dung and Mrs. Tan with their triplets. Photo: Huy Thu.

In 2002, due to difficult economic conditions, Mr. Dung and his wife had to sell their house in block 8 to move back to live in their parents' garden (block 2). Coming here, because the garden was too small, they could not raise any more animals. There was little land, but many people, for a long time the whole family mainly relied on Mr. Dung's motorbike taxi job.

To raise their children, Mr. Dung and his wife had to work all kinds of jobs. Mr. Dung used to sell ice cream, sell vegetables, be a construction worker, drive a motorbike taxi... Mrs. Tan, despite her illness and poor health, still had to work hard with her husband, babysitting, planting rice, making dashboard bricks, selling goods for hire... doing whatever was called for. When Manh, Trong, and Vinh were in 4th grade, Mrs. Tan took a risk and went to work as a housemaid in Hanoi for 6 months, hoping to earn a little extra money to raise her children, but she had to return home because Mr. Dung could not take care of 4 young children.

“When the children were young, we had to worry about making a living. When they learned to work to help their parents, things got a little easier. But when the first child went to university and the three siblings went to high school, the hardships returned,” Ms. Tan shared.

Warm atmosphere of the family of triplets. Photo by Huy Thu.

According to Mrs. Tan, the tuition fees of Manh, Trong, and Vinh always seem to be paid at the end of the class, and are only paid to the teacher at the end of the second semester. Every day, the three brothers walk to school. Their clothes “are not as good as other people’s”, each child only has 2 sets of long clothes to change, including 2 uniform shirts, and only 2 pairs of pants.

The textbooks the children use are all old books because “buying old books is half the price”. When hearing the children “urging” about tuition fees, Mrs. Tan at home panics, borrowing money to pay for it. But luckily “the children are all well-behaved, self-disciplined, and do not compete, so their parents are somewhat less worried”.

The journey of raising triplets for Mr. Dung and Mrs. Tan's family was full of hardships, but the hardships of the past months were compensated by the children's academic achievements. All three children, Manh, Trong, and Vinh, passed the entrance exam to the Information Officer School.

In the family's joy, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Tuong (85 years old) - the three children's grandmother shared: "The days of not having enough to eat and being in trouble are gone. Now thinking back on the past makes me cry with joy"./.

Huy Thu